Refusing the Problem Set: From Standard Answers to Risk Consciousness

I have never liked doing problem sets. More precisely, I have never liked exam-oriented training. This is not because I come from the kind of resource background where one can simply afford not to do problems, nor do I think there is anything shameful about taking part in exams. As I once put it to a group of friends: if one cannot participate in the U.S. stock market and therefore chooses domestic wealth management products, that is rational decision-making; if one clearly can participate in the U.S. stock market and still chooses domestic wealth management products, that is a matter of low cognition. Of course, this does not include those high-level players technically capable of navigating the A-share market. The point of the analogy is simply this: very often, the problem is not that people are incapable, but that there is no sufficiently good pool available for them to choose from. Different rationalities are therefore generated under different constraints.

The deepest side effect of exam training is that it injects into people an extremely bad habit: fear of making mistakes, and fear of deviating from some predetermined standard. A test presupposes an answer, and it also presupposes a judge. It rewards the “correct” and devalues the “wrong.” In an environment that negates error over a long period of time, people can easily come to understand error itself as a failure of character or ability, rather than as a necessary cost of exploration.

Yet in reality, without trial and error, it is very difficult for a person to truly understand what they want. The fields of knowledge in this world are so vast that ignorance is the normal condition for everyone. You may become an expert in certain areas, but you must also acknowledge your insufficiency in others. A sense of direction matters far more than “how much work has been done”; one cannot expect execution ability to conceal a poverty of decision-making ability.

Reality is always full of ambiguous zones, and risk and return are forever two sides of the same coin. Good decisions do not automatically emerge from the fluency of execution; they are gradually formed in the turbulence, pressure, and trade-offs of reality. If a person develops learned helplessness toward risk and error, then the possibility of iteration is naturally cut off. Even when we speak of execution ability, many people do not act from self-drive or a sense of achievement, but are undertaking a kind of ascetic discipline. As I see it, busyness can never finally conceal the emptiness of meaning. Many people work hard at “doing problems” not because they are curious about knowledge, or because they take pleasure in creation, but simply because they have become accustomed to avoiding punishment as their governing principle of action.